Fifteen thousand years ago, when the human family was living at the mouths of caves, one of us would venture deep into the forest looking for something to eat and would then come back to tell the rest what he or she came upon out there. It was the account of that experience that most mattered to us, not the teller who had survived it. We wanted a good telling, and still do. Here is Robert Hedin at the edge of the firelight, offering us the wonders he has seen.
Ted Kooser
Selected Poems, Part 1
Moving Out with the Finches
for Sherod Santos
This morning I’m going to drag my desk
Out into the backyard and set it down
By the birdbath, near the flower bed
Overgrown with weeds. And the black
Leather armchair where I like to read
I’ll lug out under the two young maples,
Along with the Persian rug, the tall
Goosenecked lamp, the books, the CDs,
Even the huge unruly fern in the corner.
I’m going to haul it all outside, out
Into the open air where it’s quiet,
Where I won’t be bothered,
Out by the lilacs, the trellis of roses,
Near the blossoming fruit trees
Where they like to gather, the finches,
Those little birds, the color of pollen.
My Mother’s Hats
She kept them high on the top shelf,
In boxes big as drums—
Bright, crescent-shaped boats
With little fishnets dangling down—
And wore them with her best dress
To teas, coffee parties, department stores.
What a lovely catch, my father used to say,
Watching her sail off into the afternoon waters.
Raising the Titanic
I spent the winter my father died down in the basement,
under the calm surface of the floorboards, hundreds
of little plastic parts spread out like debris
on the table. And for months while the snow fell
and my father sat in the big chair by the Philco dying,
I worked my way up deck by deck, story by story,
from steerage to first class, until at last it was done,
stacks, deck chairs, all the delicate rigging.
And there it loomed, a blazing city of the dead.
Then painted the gaping hole at the waterline
and placed my father at the railings, my mother
in a lifeboat pulling away from the wreckage.
Bells
for M.L., killed in Vietnam
I remember it was 1965, the summer
I was put in charge
of the bells. Above me
and high up, they waited
like thunderheads at the top
of the First Presbyterian Church.
And so each Sunday I would pull,
and down out of that dark
ringing would fall,
like flecks of glittering mica,
dead moths, flies, and the small
luminous bones of bats.
But most of all it was dust.
And all summer with the sun
high in its arc,
and the heat building slowly
by degrees, I rose, lifted
by that long bell rope,
and, swinging there, would pull
the dust down, like light,
over the bowed, sleeping Bibles.
Rowing Lessons
Today I’m out on the river,
teaching my boys
how to plant
and pull, to work
the oars deep, what
my father taught me,
the simple mechanics
of it all: how each oar
is a wing, each
stroke a beat. Then
pass them to my sons,
and off we go,
gliding, both boys
side by side, shoulder
to shoulder.
And so it goes on, oar
and oarlock, this keeping
the river moving.
The Old Swede
Strange, how I think of him every time
I take a bath: down in that little room
Off the cellar stairs, sprawled out
Full length in the long, white hull
Of the tub, belting out the hymns
They brought over from the old country,
The ones he used to sing in steerage.
Some nights even now I hear him
All over the house, every room,
His big voice booming through the vents.
The Greatest
for Michael Waters
What I remember most about Muhammad Ali
Are not the fast hands and loose, graceful footwork.
Or Manila or Zaire. Or even what came after—
The slurred speech, the sad slow shuffle.
No, what I remember is a boy somewhere
In